Page 125 of The Oath We Give

“I made her a promise that I’d never tell anyone, and she promised to believe me when I told her there weren’t voices, that I wasn’t losing my mind.”

I lived my entire life with a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia to keep her secret. To keep her safe. Because she was the only person I had, and I didn’t want to lose her.

“My psychotic break after Sage came back was real. All the trauma of losing Rose, it just—” I exhale, leaning into Coraline’s hands. “It fucked me up, but the hospitalization was the best thing for me. If it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have found out the truth for myself.”

There is no headache, just complete relief.

Dams collapse upon themselves inside of me. I no longer feel trapped in my own head. I’m a rushing river, flowing, feeling.

“The guys,” she mutters. “They don’t know?”

I shake my head. “Telling them back then would’ve meant betraying Rosie. I couldn’t do that to her.”

Even though I’d wanted to. Even though I’d begged her to let me tell them, just so my closest friends would know me for who I really was and not who this town told them I was.

But she refused, and it was my secret to give them. I couldn’t make them believe Rosemary’s truth. So I swallowed it, chewed it down like nails, and lived with them stabbing my throat every time I opened my mouth.

Until I just stopped talking because it hurt too fucking much to lie to them.

“When you’re ready,” she hums, a yawn stealing her voice, “you’ll tell them. I’ll go with you. We can do it together.”

I look at her, lifting my palm to her cheek, rubbing a thumb just below her eye. A small smile tugs at the corner of her lips. Seeing her this way, vulnerable and open, fills me with heat.

This woman is not a curse, never has been.

She is a fucking gift.

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TWENTY-NINE

PINK CARNATIONS

CORALINE

The last placeI ever expected to be in my life was standing at Rosemary Donahue’s grave.

I didn’t know her.

We never once spoke, barely had classes together. I didn’t come to her funeral, even though the entire school did. I didn’t know her.

“Hope you like carnations,” I mumble to the weathered rock in the ground, setting the flowers I bought on her tombstone. “Google said the pink ones are supposed to represent gratitude or something.”

I refrain from face-palming my forehead. What is she gonna do? Return them if she doesn’t like the fucking flowers?

This already feels stupid on my part, like I’m screwing this whole thing up. After last night with Silas, hearing his story, his truth, and then staying up until the sun was high in the sky talking, there had only been one thing I wanted to do today.

I wanted to talk to Rosemary.

“I know this is probably really weird, me showing up like this. We don’t know each other, but you don’t feel like a total stranger to me. I’m falling in love with someone who you once loved, and it feels like that connects us somehow. I mean, we gotta be sorta similar, right? We have the same type.”

I’m tempted to laugh at my own joke to settle my nerves, but when silence replies to me, I just end up feeling more anxious. Maybe it’s because the first time I’m outwardly admitting my feelings for Silas, it’s to his dead girlfriend.

I feel like the poster child for emotional incompetence.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say, and if you’re listening, I hope you take this and know that I mean it.” I loose a breath. “Thank you. Thank you for loving him. I’ve never met someone so deserving of love every second of every day like Silas.”

I’m not even sure if the love I have to give is enough for a man like him. My heart feels like this dirty, blackened, rotten organ that I’m presenting to a person with clean hands. It’s being held together with old Band-Aids and bubble gum. It’s not intact; it’s fractured and wretched, and I know he deserves more.